Moratorium Now! seeks to foment a grassroots dialogue on how unjustly the U.S. death penalty is applied and to organize grassroots pressure to stop executions. Equal Justice USA launched the campaign in 1997.
Reasons for a moratorium
Campaign Goals
Objectives toward goals
Progress to Date
As of January 1999, nearly 375 organizations have signed on to the call "Not One More Execution." These include two city govenments: Mt. Rainier, MD, and New Haven, CT. Many have held an educational debate about how the death penalty is applied before passing a formal moratorium resolution.
Momentum builds as people become active. In 1998, we reached more than 125,000 people via a letter signed by Sister Helen Prejean and Susan Sarandon. State organizing efforts are under way in Pennsylvania and Illinois and budding in North Carolina and Missouri. Around the country, other local efforts are brewing.
More than 1,500 organizing packets have been distributed so far. The packet includes sample resolutions, a step-by-step guide for preparing and putting a resolution before a local group, talking points for working with the local media, a listing of death penalty resources and resource people, Death Penalty Information Center reports on innocence and race, and more. Activists are urged to introduce resolutions to educate their local organization and to use ratified resolutions to generate press coverage and pressure public officials.
Moratorium Now! Tally
1999 Goal: To recruit 1,000 groups (including 10 city councils) to join the moratorium call.
In January, Trisha Kendall joined the Equal Justice USA staff as a full-time campaign organizer. We plan to add a second full-time organizer by fall 1999. Our goal for 1999 is to secure 1,000 more organizational endorsements and resolutions toward our goal of 2,000 by 2001. As the year progresses, we will seek to reach out more widely, to communities where support for the death penalty is strong. We will also target city councils and other official institutions, gearing our efforts towards cities with the most potential.
Legislation
Organizing to get resolutions passed will serve to strengthen state moratorium activist networks. The aim is to identify states where efforts to enact legislation or executive orders imposing a mora-torium have the greatest potential for success in 2000 and beyond.
Educational Outreach
A Saga of Shame - a book of essays on race and the death penalty that Equal Justice USA is currently compiling and editing - is slated for release in late 1999. We plan to use it to highlight the need for a moratorium. Saga will feature articles by Amnesty International's Pierre San‚ Howard Zinn and the Rev. Bernice King, among others.
We will release other materials to fuel grassroots edu-cation and outreach. The 1998 pamphlet, "Equal Justice Under Law? How Racism Riddles the U.S. Death Penalty," will be followed in 1999 by a similar overview on how poverty skews the promise of equal justice. We will also continue to publish the newsletter, Moratorium News. All these materials will be distributed through our campaign organizing packets, as well as regular Equal Justice USA mailings, which encourage constituents to distribute them further. We anticipate distributing 1,500 organizing packets in 1999.
Building a National Coalition
Equal Justice USA will continue to serve as convener of the Moratorium Working Group - a network of human rights groups that come together to build strategy for a moratorium. This gathering brings together representatives from the ACLU, the Death Penalty Information Center, Human Rights Watch, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Moratorium 2000 and other groups.
The Working Group began meeting ad hoc after the American Bar Association issued its call to halt executions in February 1997. By the summer of the same year, at Equal Justice USA's instigation, the group agreed to meet regularly to network and strategize. It serves as an informal advisory group to Equal Justice USA in developing organizing strategies for Moratorium Now!
Equal Justice USA will also be coordinating efforts with a new initiative chaired by Sister Helen Prejean - Moratorium 2000 - aimed at mounting worldwide support for a moratorium resolution expected to be voted on by the U.N. General Assembly in late 1999. Plans include delivering a truckload of petitions to the U.N. in New York before to the vote.
Raising the Public Profile
Equal Justice USA will seek media coverage at campaign milestones, such as when our tally reaches 500 and 1,000 organizations calling for a moratorium.
Additionally, we are working via the Moratorium Working Group to establish a committee of prominent individuals who support a moratorium on executions but hold diverging views on the death penalty in principle. The purpose of this initiative is to generate media attention that broadens the public debate about the reasons for a moratorium.